The Midwife's Choice (5 page)

Absolutely confused, Martha peeked around him, glanced from one to the other, and clamped her gaping mouth shut. Again. Of all the people she expected to be able to confirm June Morgan's identity and attest to her character, Dr. McMillan would be last in line.

Dead last.

D
r. McMillan spun around, and his face was flushed a deeper shade of crimson. He nearly knocked Martha over. Again. Fortunately, she was a bit lighter on her feet than he was. She managed a quick side step and eased around him. She grabbed her cape from the peg on the wall and handed it to June. “Here. Put this on. Apparently, you two know one another so there's no sense bothering to introduce you.”

Still, the air was wrought with embarrassment for all. Even though the man was a doctor, he rarely, if ever, tended to a woman in her nightclothes. Martha treated most women when they were ill. For very serious cases that required a doctor, propriety demanded that he examine his female patients as they lay in bed fully dressed and covered by the bedclothes.

With her cheeks flaming, too, June donned the cape and sat down again. “You can come in now, Benjamin.”

He hesitated, then turned around and approached the hearth. When he was close, he turned his back to the fire and warmed his hands behind him. “I'm sorry. I didn't know Widow Cade
had a guest, let alone . . . I mean, whatever are you doing here in Trinity?”

June chuckled. “It's a long tale, I'm afraid. I could ask you the same question, though. The last time I saw Charles, he said he'd lost touch with you and hadn't heard from you in ages.”

Basically ignored and excluded from the exchange, Martha watched and listened to the conversation. Her expression, apparently, prompted June to pause and explain. “Benjamin and my brother, Charles, were friends.”

The doctor nodded. “I've gained a few pounds since then, I'm afraid. We went to school together in Boston, and I went home with Charles for several holidays.”

June laughed out loud. “Holidays indeed! Father never quite got over one visit before Charles brought you home for another.” She winked at Martha. “Wealthy young stallions. Both of them. Scouring the herd of equally wealthy young mares, looking for just the right one to claim. Until the next soiree, of course,” she teased.

The doctor puffed out his chest, but Martha still found it hard to imagine this rotund young man as a stallion of any sort. “That's a bit of an exaggeration, but I daresay we didn't find the city boring. Not once. Of course, we always had to bribe a certain someone's big sister not to give away all our secrets. Till she up and married. Then our secrets were quite safe and certainly cheaper,” he quipped.

“Indeed,” June murmured. “I thought for certain you'd practice in New York when you returned from France after finishing your training there. What changed your mind?”

He dropped his gaze. When he looked up, his sad smile tugged at Martha's heartstrings. “I married in France. Claudine. She was so young, so very beautiful . . .” He paused to clear his throat. “She died quite suddenly soon after we were married. Somehow, I managed to finish my training. When I went home . . . it was a difficult time. I went into seclusion. I
knew if I contacted Charles or other friends, I would only have to explain. . . .”

He paused and cleared his throat. “Grandfather told me his friend in Trinity, Doc Beyer, had passed on. He thought I might try to start my practice here. He was right.”

June paled. “I'm so sorry. I had no idea.”

He waved away her expression of sympathy. “It's been a while now. I have a new life. A satisfying one. At least I can think back to our short time together and be grateful for the time we did have and . . . and pray that one day I'll find another woman as special as she was.”

Martha held very still. She could feel in her fingertips the rapid beating of her heart. She never ceased to marvel at how often men and women kept their tragedies private, tucked deep within their hearts, safe from prying gossipers.

Until the past caught up with the present.

No one in Trinity had an inkling of this young man's apparent wealth or that he was a widower. She stored his secret next to all the others she had learned over the years, so necessary if she was to keep the trust of the folks she treated.

While June and the doctor reminisced about mutual friends, Martha fixed a new plate of cookies and poured a fresh cup of tea for him. “Come. Sit at the table,” she suggested.

June yawned and covered her mouth with her hand. “I'm sorry. It's been a long day full of surprises. I think I'll take to my bed and let you two talk privately. At this hour, I assume there's something urgent you need to discuss. We'll talk more tomorrow.”

While Dr. McMillan went to the table and started to eat, she rose from her seat and adjusted the cape around her shoulders. “I'll bring this down first thing in the morning, unless . . .”

“No. That's fine. If I'm called out before then, I can always knock at your door.”

June headed toward the staircase, then paused and turned
around. “What about Victoria? Do you want me to wake her and have her move to your room?”

Martha swallowed hard. As much as she wanted to be near Victoria and see her face the moment she opened her eyes in the morning, she shook her head. “Let her sleep. I'll speak to her in the morning and let her know my decision. You can . . . you can tell her we talked.”

With a grateful smile, June bid them good-night and proceeded up the stairs. Dr. McMillan polished off a cookie and cocked his head. “Did she say Victoria? Your daughter's home?”

Martha sat down across from him and quickly recounted her tale. “So you see, it appears my girl has come home only to ask my blessing to go back to New York City and live with the Morgans.”

He reached across the table and covered her trembling hands with one of his own. His tender touch and the genuine concern in his eyes caught her off guard. “They're very fine people.”

“So I've been led to believe. From the references she brought with her,” she murmured.

“Sometimes we must remember to love deeply enough to let those we care about most in this world find their own way. It's too late after they're gone.”

Martha gently removed her hands and laid them on her lap. His poignant words hinted at yet another element in his tragic loss. The idea that this young man, scarcely older than Oliver, could offer her such wise counsel was unsettling, especially since she had always been the one to offer advice to him in the past. His words, however, brought comfort and would help to make her decision about whether to let Victoria return to New York City all the easier to consider. She was not quite ready to make that decision. Not quite. “You said we needed to talk?” she asked, changing the direction of their conversation.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead with the
tips of his fingers. “Before I begin, I'll ask for your confidence about my late wife. I'm not ready to share—”

“Of course,” she whispered.

He let out a long sigh. “Thank you. Now . . . I'm afraid I have some troubling news.” He looked her straight in the eye, then let out a deep breath. “There's no easy way to say this, so I'll be blunt. Samuel's vision is gone. He's completely blind, and I'm afraid there's nothing more to be done for him.”

Martha's heart leaped in her chest. Her mind raced with questions that tumbled out in a rush. “Blind? Are you certain? When did this happen? Why wasn't I summoned? What happened?”

She paused to drag in several long breaths as her mind tried to sort through her thoughts about Samuel. A recluse since moving to Trinity some years back, Samuel Meeks lived in an isolated cabin in the woods behind the cemetery. With a raised tattoo of a serpent covering one cheek, and other tattoos hidden by shirtsleeves, he had a vocabulary worthy of his former trade, a seaman. He frightened most folks. Except for Martha and Will, a displaced young orphan from New York who made his home with Samuel now.

She had been secretly treating the recluse for nearly a year, but nothing she had tried had cured the ailment that had been slowly claiming his eyesight, and Dr. McMillan's news was truly disturbing.

The idea of pairing Samuel and Will together some months back, in an effort to keep the boy from running off to sea, had been nothing short of divine inspiration. Martha had been as surprised as anyone else by the depth of the bond that quickly developed between Samuel and the boy. Despite his advanced years, Samuel had just the right spirit and disposition to be able to handle the seven-year-old, who could match Samuel's salty vocabulary, if not surpass it.

Will's yearning to follow Samuel's footsteps into a life at sea
had inspired a sort of hero worship that gave Samuel an edge when it came to molding the boy's character. While watching the reclusive curmudgeon nurture the boy, Martha had seen Samuel evolve into the kind, generous man she knew existed behind the gruff exterior he presented to the rest of the world.

Separating the two of them now would be disastrous, but necessary, if Samuel had truly lost his vision completely.

“What happened?” she repeated, sorely disappointed that Samuel had apparently waited too long before seeing the doctor, as she had begged him to do for months.

“Will came to fetch me just after supper. I hadn't been home all day, and he'd been to the office three times earlier. Anyway, according to Will, Samuel woke up this morning and his vision was gone. Simply gone. He hasn't any sense of shadows anymore. Only total darkness.”

Martha clapped her hand to her heart, and all the fears about what would happen if Samuel lost his vision jumbled together and formed a lump in her throat. She swallowed hard. “Mercy. I can't believe it's finally happened. Poor Samuel. He must be devastated. What will he do now? And . . . and Will. What will happen to our Will?”

“I don't know. That's why I came directly to you. Something will have to be done for both of them. Just what that will be—I'm open for ideas,” he prompted. “It's not going to be easy.”

Already overburdened with the troubles of the day, Martha sighed. “Nothing ever is, but that's neither here nor there. Samuel won't be able to live in that cabin by himself, let alone care for a young boy. Something has to be done, but that ‘something' is troublesome. No matter what we suggest, we're going to have to contend with one very stubborn old fool and a boy ready to find the first ship ready to sail.”

“He's too young. No one would hire him on as a mate, no matter how skilled he is with those knots he's learned,” the doctor countered.

“He's old enough to be a cabin boy and willful enough to do it. No, I can't let that happen, even if I have to tie that boy to a tree until he listens to reason. Since neither one of them has any family, we'll just have to find a home for them. That's all.”

The doctor sputtered and choked on his tea. “That's all? It'd be easier to find a home for a pair of rattlesnakes than those two. There isn't a family for fifty miles that would take them both in.”

She frowned. “Maybe not. But we might be able to find them separate homes.”

“Separate homes?” He chortled. “They're bonded together like bark to a tree. Whether you're looking for one or separate homes, there's not going to be a long line of folks anxious to take them in.”

Her frown deepened. Her resolve stiffened. “We don't need a long line of folks. Only two will suffice.” Her mind raced with possibilities. As a midwife and healer, she knew most of the folks in the surrounding area, and she reviewed them all in her mind.

He watched her closely. The skepticism in his gaze only made her more determined to prove him wrong. She cast him a disapproving glance and he held up one hand. “Maybe you can find a family for Will. Maybe. He's young and hardworking, but he's a far cry from—”

“He's a boy with great promise. Only folks who recognize that will be good enough for that child,” she murmured. She was sorely tempted to take Will in herself, but with no home of her own and with no husband to provide the stern guidance Will required, she rejected that idea, even as an image of a family took shape in her mind.

“Suppose you find such a family for the boy,” he countered. “I'll even admit you might just be able to do that. But Samuel is a different matter. The man's at least seventy. He's blind, and he won't be able to contribute anything to his care. He's also
scary enough to give most children nightmares. He'll have to become a ward of the town, and he's just ornery enough to hear the word
charity
and storm off into the woods, get good and lost, and freeze to death.”

Try as she might to disagree, she simply could not. She almost admitted to herself that there was nothing she could do for Samuel . . . until she remembered something she had read earlier that night. She closed her eyes and knitted her brows together. She thought long and hard until she very clearly remembered reading something that might well prove to be the perfect solution.

When she opened her eyes, she looked at Dr. McMillan and grinned.

He narrowed his gaze. Disbelief etched his expression. “Tell me you've thought of an answer to this whole dilemma, and I'll . . . I'll give up sweets for a month of Sundays.”

She rose and reached across the table to pat his arm. “In that case, I'll be right back. There's a cherry pie in the shop just begging to be sampled. If I'm right, as I suspect I am, tomorrow you'll be forced to eat your own words.”

She chuckled at her own pun.

He glowered.

“I'd better get that pie and cut you a big piece,” she teased.

Her steps were light, and she hummed to herself as she made her way to the shop in the front of the confectionery. Despite the tragedy that had befallen both Samuel and Will this day, despite the disappointment that clouded Victoria's homecoming and the heartrending decision Martha would be forced to make, despite the grief Nancy and Russell Clifford now embraced, there were blessings to be found.

True blessings.